We are looking for a CRM web application and so far salesforce.com/force.com seems the only one which allows you to build applications directly on their platform. However I was wondering if gmail/google applications offer the same freedom on their platform .
So far we found a firefox extension being “exactly” what we are looking for. You may take a look at http://rapportive.com/. As you can see the contact details appear directly in the gmail interface.
The only issue is that the extension may become unstable if gmail changes its interface or slower if we want to more complex features so I would like to know if it’s possible to build the features directly on the gmail platform .
Basically we would like to “upgrade” the gmail application with additional features (e.g automatically reply based on the email content, contact details view as in the rapportive.com extension etc .
Have you tried Gmail contextual gadget?
I haven’t tried it myself. But it looks like what you described.